Lie Charts

A New Book Explains How Kinsey Perverted a Nation with False Science

Just three years after World War II ended and the war heroes returned home, Americans came under attack again. This time, it wasn't brutal dictators and their armies leading the assault, it was a pseudo-scientist named Alfred Kinsey. His 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, shocked the nation and lit the spark for what would become the sexual revolution. America would never be the same.

Dr. Judith Reisman continues to lift the veil on the work of the celebrated academic and author in her latest book, Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America. Grasping Kinsey's influence provides the solution to the puzzle of why today's children are growing up in a world so vastly, frighteningly different from the one those World War II vets knew.

Kinsey fed America a pack of lies, starting with his claim that sexual behavior widely accepted as wrong was, in fact, commonplace. From there, he pushed the lie that such behavior was normal, and finally, he advanced the lie that it was good, healthy, and to be encouraged. Thus, by degrees, Kinsey and his minions turned America's moral compass upside down, ultimately causing what had long been considered wrong to be embraced as right.

Outrageous Research Findings

In Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Kinsey claimed to have scientific data proving that, based on their sexual practices, 95 percent of American men could rightly be accused of some kind of sexual offense under then-current law. Here are some statistics from the book, based on what is now widely acknowledged to be fraudulent research:

• 67–98 percent of men had premarital sex.

• 69 percent of white males had at least one experience with a prostitute.

• 50 percent of husbands committed adultery.

• 50 percent of farm boys had sex with animals.

Regarding the last statistic, Kinsey wrote that humans engaging in sex with animals is "biologically and psychologically part of the normal mammalian picture."

Absurd and grotesque as that definition of "normal" is, it gets much worse. Reisman writes that Kinsey was the first acclaimed scientist to avow that "virginity is unhealthy, promiscuity helps marriages, pornography is constructive, obsessive masturbation and bestiality are never problematic, bi/homosexual sex acts are normal, and children are . . . appropriate sex partners for adults."

Included in the Human Male volume was a "Heterosexual–homosexual rating scale," which purported to illustrate, based on "both psychologic [sic] reactions and overt experience," the degree to which men were homosexual or heterosexual. The scale indicated (based on Kinsey's interviews) that 10 percent of the male population was exclusively homosexual, most men were squarely in the middle (presumably bisexual), and none were exclusively heterosexual.

In 1953, Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which contained statistics equally shocking to those in his Male volume:

• 50 percent of women had premarital sex.

• 26 percent committed adultery by age 40.

• 28 percent went through an active homosexual period lasting more than three years.

Together, the books began to erode America's Judeo-Christian moral underpinnings.

Who provided the basis for such implausible statistics? According to Reisman, from 1941–1945, 68 percent of Kinsey's total sample of males was made up of

As for female research subjects, Kinsey selected—and paid—prostitutes to represent American womanhood. He also loosely defined "wife" as someone who had lived "at least a year" with a man. With such interviewees, it's no wonder that he came up with high rates of premarital sexual activity and adultery.

Extolled in the Media

Kinsey's claims being both shocking and titillating, an eager and willing media was quick to spread the word. The August 24, 1953 issues of both Time and Life magazines featured articles on Kinsey, with Time also putting him on the cover. The Life article included a graph with this caption: "MEASURE OF INDISCRETION is shown in Dr. Kinsey's findings: 85% of men and 50% of women have had premarital sex experience; 50% of men and 40% of women have been or will be unfaithful after marriage." The magazine told its readers that Kinsey and his team of researchers knew more "about women than any men in the world."

The September 4, 1953 issue of Colliers quoted Kinsey blaming marital unhappiness on "the church, the school and the home." Newspapers around the world covered his "scientific" findings, while Kinsey himself spread the word by lecturing at colleges to overflow crowds. The hippie culture of the 1960s was being spawned.

Kinsey was extolled for his "daring sexual honesty," as Reisman puts it, while members of the Greatest Generation were labeled "hypocrites." Seeds of doubt were sown between spouses, and in children about their parents. Reisman writes:

As the delicate connection between Judeo-Christian morality and intimacy came unglued, insecurity crept into relationships, undermining marriage and eroding familial bonds. . . . Kinsey argued that the Greatest Generation was so wildly immoral that we needed to reconsider our legal and social restrictions.

It should be noted that Kinsey did have critics, among them a committee of the American Statistical Association, which condemned Kinsey's methodology and sample selection. Committee member John Tukey said that a "random sampling of three people would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey." The criticism centered around the facts that male prostitutes and prison inmates were wildly over-represented in Kinsey's sample, and that only a self-selecting group would willingly be interviewed about taboo subjects.

Gershon Legman, the "erotica" bibliographer for the Kinsey Institute, wrote in 1964 that Kinsey's studies were "statistical hokum" designed to disguise his "propagandistic purpose of respectabilizing homosexuality and certain sexual perversions." But the critics' voices were drowned out by a chorus of approving voices that repeated Kinsey's lies so often that they finally came to be widely accepted as fact.

Pervasive Impact

Thus did Kinsey, whose academic specialty was insects, dupe the world into believing his "sex science." Academics bought it and taught it. Students believed it, and it wasn't long before "free love" became the defining phrase of the Greatest Generation's children. The 1972 best-seller Open Marriage, with its suggestion that infidelity could enrich a marriage, became a hot topic of discussion. Its authors, Nena and George O'Neill, claimed that "what really went on in the sexual life of America had at last been made public through [Kinsey's] rigorous scientific research. Inhibitions began to look plain silly."

Kinsey's "rigorous scientific research" was also used to justify changes in the legal system. By 1984, no-fault divorce had been adopted in full or in part in all 50 states. Divorce rates skyrocketed as the stigma of divorce declined.

As parents became convinced that Kinsey's brave new world was real, they lost confidence in their own convictions and turned to "experts" for advice on how to raise their children. Noted sociologist Christopher Lasch pointed out that these experts recommended that "the child should have every wish and need met, should not have the experience of being refused." The children so raised then created their own famously named culture of "sex, drugs and rock-and-roll." As Lasch also wrote, "The children born . . . to World War II heroes became the rebels and dropouts of the sixties and seventies." Reisman sums it up this way: "In the end, the Greatest Generation won at the battlefront but lost the home front."

In a 1997 piece for Salon titled "The Man Who Took Sex Out of the Closet," Scott McLemee also wrote about Kinsey's impact:

The history of sex in America falls into two large, unequal, yet clearly defined periods. The first era belonged to the Puritans, the Victorians and related figures of restraint and misery. People were supposed to battle their urges. . . . This epoch of libidinal prohibition lasted until Jan. 4, 1948. The following day, Professor Alfred C. Kinsey of Indiana published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.

Kinsey's legacy is of epic proportions. Between 1950 and 2002, there has been a 750 percent increase in illegitimacy rates—despite legal and easily obtainable contraception, to say nothing of abortion, at least since 1973. Sex and marriage do not go hand-in-hand any longer. As Reisman puts it:

Once love replaced marriage as justification for intercourse, it was not long before lust sufficed as adequate reason. . . . Today, forget marriage or love. Millions of young people live in an era of one-night stands, "booty calls," and "friends with benefits." It all started with Kinsey's phony statistic that half of "good" women were promiscuous.

Kinsey's Acolytes

Hugh Hefner's interest in sex was also kindled by Kinsey's work, according to biographer Russell Miller. The first Playboy magazine was published in 1953, five years after Kinsey unleashed his Human Male volume on America. In Playboy's inaugural issue, Hefner paid tribute to Kinsey, writing that "we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than the one just taken care of by the Kinsey Report."

Hefner, inspired by Kinsey, was the first to mainstream pornography. Now, thanks in part to the internet, pornography is pervasive, and is even regarded in many circles as normal and healthy. Classes on pornography, complete with illustrations and movie screenings, are taught as a legitimate academic subject on college campuses.

Kinsey's influence is also felt in the area of sex education. With funding from Hugh Hefner, Wardell Pomeroy and other Kinsey devotees founded SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. Dedicated to "sex and sexuality education, sexual health, and sexual rights," SIECUS is one of the foremost providers of sex education material to American public schools today. With help from the like-minded organization Planned Parenthood, educators have been armed with materials for teaching children about contraceptives and instructing them in "diverse" forms of sexual activity.

Dr. Mary Calderone, a co-founder of SIECUS and a past medical director for Planned Parenthood, told attendees of the 1980 meeting of the Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians that SIECUS wanted to teach society "the vital importance of infant and childhood sexuality." She went on to say that children's sexuality should "be developed in the same way as the child's inborn human capacity to talk or to walk."

Ben Shapiro, author of Porn Generation, wrote about sex education providers such as SIECUS and Planned Parenthood in a piece for WorldNetDaily:

They have used sex education as a means of indoctrinating children into a cult of moral relativism and hedonism. "[Our goal] is to be ready as educators and parents to help young people obtain sex satisfaction before marriage," wrote Planned Parenthood staffer Lena Levine in 1953. "By sanctioning sex before marriage, we will prevent fear and guilt." . . . Levine's dream has come true—we live in a society where condoms are dispensed to seventh-graders, where twelve-year-olds are told about the glories of oral sex and where children are given the "opportunity to develop their values and increase self-esteem," to quote Debra W. Hafner, former president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

Current SIECUS guidelines recommend discussing the following topics with children aged 5 to 8 (i.e., starting in kindergarten):

• Both boys and girls have body parts that feel good when touched.

• Touching and rubbing one's genitals to feel good is called masturbation.

• Vaginal intercourse—when a penis is placed inside a vagina—is the most common way for a sperm and egg to join.

• Some people are homosexual, which means they can be attracted to and fall in love with someone of the same
gender.

Kinsey's acolytes have taken over the world of sex education, and have adopted his mantra that children are "sexual from birth" as the basis of their educational philosophy. And thanks to their "comprehensive" sex education curricula, many elementary school children are sexualized at an early age. Dr. Meg Meeker, in her 2002 book Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids, reports that almost half of today's teenagers have had sex by grade 12. In the last twenty years, rates of Chlamydia and genital herpes have risen 500 percent among white teenagers. According to the Medical Encyclopedia, there are nearly 12 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases every year, with almost 65 percent of those striking people under the age of 25.

Perversion & Pedophilia

Kinsey's own sexual perversions were well hidden from the world behind his bow tie, crew cut, and scholarly demeanor. Biographer James Jones writes that Kinsey's earliest sexual experiences occurred at age 7, in a Hoboken, New Jersey basement where he and other neighborhood children would "look at one another, [and] poke straws in various apertures." Kinsey's brother directed the later owner of their childhood home to a hiding place in the attic where, he said, his "crazy brother" had hidden some "treasures" away. There was found a box containing a kind of hand-sewn brush with holes drilled in it. Jones wrote that Kinsey "hid from his family and the world the instrument he used to seek both sexual pleasure and physical pain. . . . By late adolescence, if not before, Kinsey's behavior was clearly pathological, satisfying every criterion of sexual perversion." His death, at age 62, was caused by a severe testicular infection likely brought on by venereal disease and complications from trauma to his sexual organs.

His homosexual relationships with colleagues and graduate students are well documented. Reisman writes that on Kinsey's staff, "everyone was a bisexual, homosexual, pedophile, pederast, or just wholly amoral. By 1940, Kinsey directed all of his team members . . . to 'experiment sexually,' as he had been doing." Filming various sexual encounters between staff members was a regular part of Kinsey's "research."

Another sordid, contemptible aspect to the story of Alfred Kinsey is the research he and his team compiled on children and sex. In his Male volume was a table called "Pre-Adolescent Eroticism and Orgasm." The column labeled "ORGASM: Data from Other Subjects" indicates that the 214 children analyzed ranged in age from one to 14 years old. According to Kinsey himself, "Of the 214 cases . . . all but 14 were subsequently observed." Reisman points out the obvious but disturbing fact that this means that 12-month-oldinfants were "observed" having an orgasm. How? And by whom?

The same table also has a column labeled "Erotic Arousal," which is divided into three categories: "In Any Sex Play," "In Heterosexual Play," and "In Homosexual Play." Those research subjects ranged in age from 4 to 15. Once again comes the mind-boggling question of who arranged and observed—to name one small segment of the data—eighteen 4-to-6-year-olds in "homosexual play"?

As if that weren't bad enough, there is the book's next research table, "Ages of Pre-Adolescent Orgasm," which includes the notation that the chart is "based on actual observation of 317 males." Starting with two-month-old babies, the chart records statistics on the ages at which the observed boys supposedly reached orgasm.

Reisman writes that the observers, or, more accurately put, the abusers, could well have included Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and Paul Gebhard—all members of Kinsey's inner circle, his faculty cult at Indiana University—as well as Kinsey himself. Gebhard, writes Reisman, "later acknowledged that they asked child rapists to get data on child orgasm . . . time it and report back to us.'" In an audio interview later published, Gebhard openly admitted working with pedophiles:

Gebhard: When we interviewed pedophiles, we would ask them, "How many children have you had it with? What were their ages? Do you think they came to climax or not? . . . Are you sure it really was climax or not?"

Interviewer: So, do pedophiles normally go around with stopwatches?

Gebhard: Ah, they do if we tell them we're interested in it."

Pomeroy, too, acknowledged that Kinsey collected information from known pedophiles, who, at Kinsey's request, kept records of their sex crimes. And Kinsey brazenly published it without repercussions.

Virulent Poison

In 2005, Human Events, America's oldest conservative weekly magazine, asked a group of conservative scholars and public policy leaders to compile a list of their top ten picks for the most harmful books of the19th and 20th centuries. The top three spots went to Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, and Mao Tse-Tung's Quotations from Chairman Mao. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was fourth on the list.

It deserved such a ranking. As Reisman writes, "Kinsey's attack caught Americans totally off-guard and fueled a massive breakdown in faith, marriage and family. It produced socio-sexual toxins in the body politic that spread virulently and poisoned the minds and bodies of American men, women and children, unto the current generation." •

has covered family issues for over twenty years as a producer for CBS News and as a columnist. Currently a senior editor of Salvo, she has written for First Things, Touchstone, World Magazine and OneNewsNow.